Commercial Real Estate Pro Network

Commercial Real Estate Professionals who work with Investors, Buyers and Sellers of Commercial Real Estate. We discuss todays opportunities, problems & solutions in Commercial Real Estate.

BIGGEST RISK with Pamela Eyring 05/07/2026

BIGGEST RISK with Pamela Eyring J Darrin Gross I'd like to ask you, Pamela Eyring, what is the BIGGEST RISK?, Pamela Eyring I think the biggest risk that you can control, but is the assumption that your people that you've hired or even has worked for your company for. Long period of time knows what they don't know. And I think that assumption is a risk, because a lot of times they say, Well, you should already know this. This is common sense, but it's not, not today. You can't control the tariffs. You can't control the political scene right now, or war. We have no control over that, but we have control over our people and their development, and so that's where you mitigate the risk, is get them training, whether it's internal, with you being, you know, your supervisors or leaders, actually coaching, you know, one identifying that there are professional standards in your company. That's your culture to identifying you know individuals, either outside and hiring them in or internal to teach what they don't know, even if it's a refresher for some what is the others? Are they using it like business cards, as simple as that. I mean, these are low cost risk avoidance is in developing your people, and then create those opportunities for practice, invite them, give them, stretch them a little bit. And then lastly, I would say, you know, really reinforce that that practice so coaching them. And say, you know, Darrin, that was great. You really did wonderful. You know, speaking to this group, they got, they understood the message of what we do, clearly and articulate. You know, you were very articulate with that, and very masterful in your follow up suggestions. So giving them feedback, or don't ever wear that again, because it is not acceptable. But again, this is, this is what I would say to to to mitigate and reduce that risk, is invest in your people in this area. Because nothing else, even the the interest rates you can you can't control, you can negotiate, but you can't control all of this, but you can help and develop your people where they're making that impact. Because, like I said, it's, it's People to People business in CRE. /episode/index/show/commercialrealestatepronetwork/id/41199365

Landlord Tenant Law with Niv Davidovich - CRE PN # 550 04/30/2026

BIGGEST RISK with Niv Davidovich 04/28/2026

BIGGEST RISK with Niv Davidovich J Darrin Gross I'd like to ask you. Niv Davidovich, what is the BIGGEST RISK? Niv Davidovich Risk in being a real estate owner? J Darrin Gross However you wanted to. It's up to you to find what you consider to be the biggest risk. Niv Davidovich I guess I'm I'm somewhat tainted, because the things that I deal with are either the expensive evictions or the expensive or difficult habitability claims. So to me, I'm always going to see that as the potential risk. I can't really necessarily speak to market conditions, you know, because I think the people who bought the offices in 2019 they never thought that their class, a landmark buildings are going to crater in price by two thirds. But obviously, having a global, you know, pandemic, it's just not something you, you know, put on your pro forma. So that's probably the biggest risk, but it's probably going to happen the least amount of times in terms of regular, regular risk, it can be these lawsuits, because it's very easy for the tenants to find tenant attorneys who are going to file them on contingency. And there's a proliferation, proliferation of these types of attorneys happening in California. And I'll explain why personal injury, even though it is viewed as, Oh, those are the ambulance chasers and sort of like the low class attorneys, they're making way more money than a lot of these, even white shoe lawyers. So the the barrier to entry to get into personal injury is so high now because they're spending so much money on advertising and marketing. I'm talking about some of the big boys are spending millions of dollars, millions, plural, of dollars, every month, not year month, and that's because there's just a lot of money there. But in order to keep up with them, you need to spend that much money. If you can't, well, I'll move on to a different area where I can also make similar money. So they moved into employment Well, now there's people spending all of that money in employment law, also hundreds of 1000s, if not millions, of dollars every single month to get these employment claims. Because in California, get a good employment claim, you can really hit it big. So that barrier to entry became very big, and so they moved on to the next thing, which is the tenant habitability claims, where you can also potentially hit it big. Now it's not as big as the PI and it's not really as big as the employment, but lower barrier of entry as well. And so all these new lawyers who are coming out of law school every year that are more entrepreneurial and business minded, they need an area to get into that they can just open their shingle and just start doing it. And happens to be that habitability is something they can do. So that's happening a lot more. And if you don't have the proper insurance, you. Have one claim, it can kill you. E: Ph: 818-661-2420 /episode/index/show/commercialrealestatepronetwork/id/41043145

Surety Bonds for Commercial Real Estate Development with Gary Eastman - CRE PN #549 04/23/2026

BIGGEST RISK with Gary Eastman 04/23/2026

BIGGEST RISK with Gary Eastman J Darrin Gross I'd like to ask you, Gary Eastman, what is the BIGGEST RISK? Gary Eastman Okay, so this is a great question, and I think there are two risks that kind of embed themselves in everything that we see today, at least from the surety bond perspective. One financing risk, right? Because those are the you know, the amount of capital available is going down if the cost of capital is going up. And the second part is labor. We are, we're short of labor, and so we're going to continue to be short of labor. So those two things are an interplay all the time. And so we see, you know, bonds being able to help minimize that risk, both, both of those risks. And so if you're a real estate developer, right, your financing risk is set again. It's set up. And how we do it so you get the bond so that you can make sure that the project's done, you can get clients, you know, into the space and start receiving, you know, some sort of return on that. The second part, of course, is labor. You know, you don't want to hire somebody who then turns around and you know, they're all their subs have disappeared, or they're doing something else. And so bonds have, you know, given you a way to basically minimize both those risks. We see that in every part of society now, and places where we didn't see it five years ago. So bonds is a tool, not the only tool that you can use to go out there and start minimizing that risk, mitigating that risk, before it happens. And then, of course, the other thing is, if there is a problem, we like to jump on this quickly to mitigate the risk down so that we don't have massive lawsuits and problems going out there. Yeah, I've been doing this since 2008 and I have been fortunate that I am none of my clients have involved in a protracted litigation, which, as an attorney, warms my heart, but those are the things that we see all the time that we're trying to eliminate, if possible, and then mitigate when they do. /episode/index/show/commercialrealestatepronetwork/id/40986795

Bitcoin Mining with Beau Turner - CRE PN #548 04/16/2026

BIGGEST RISK with Beau Turner 04/14/2026

BIGGEST RISK with Beau Turner J Darrin Gross I'd like to ask you, Beau Turner, what is the BIGGEST RISK? Beau Turner Well, I think the Bitcoin network itself is very challenging to find any sort of risk in, and I think that would be surprising to most people to hear. But part of the reason it is such an incredible innovation is how it is designed to be resilient in almost any case. I mean, like, short of a forever nuclear winter and the Internet going down forever everywhere, there's not really a legitimate way to take this network out. So what I would say the risk is for our business, since we're in the mining space, is that we're actually in the physical world. So Bitcoin is a unique asset among assets, because it is digital. It's theoretically indefinite. It doesn't have a lifespan. It doesn't have a half life. It can exist forever. When you get into mining, people are usually getting into mining to outperform Bitcoin, to get, you know, the tax advantages of depreciating equipment, to get the income stream. But when you enter into the mining space, the risk that you're taking is that now you're dealing with the physical world, whereas you weren't, if you were just doing what you do, which is, you know, hold Bitcoin and cold storage digitally. And so you have to be very careful. And I mentioned, you know, briefly, our story of our first experience getting into mining in the physical world. And so the people that you work with, to me, are the most important risk to account for. That kind of goes untalked about. Your environment matters a lot. So we were, we were hosting originally in Georgia, which is a very hot, humid climate for you to run computers that are going 24/7 so we've, we've decided to locate in the beautiful state of Oregon, where we've got pretty cool climate, year round, lots of renewable power inputs and very low natural disaster risk. There's a pretty good set of reasons why you see a lot of the largest data centers and hyperscalers in the world choosing to make Oregon and the Pacific Northwest a home. That's part of it. And then we mentioned energy risk as well, which I think that's, that's probably the key economic risk. You know, the other things I talked about were more like, Is my asset going to exist? What can, what can, critically threaten me, actually owning this thing and it being safe? The energy risk is more about the business model, insulation. So, you know, energy pricing has gone up for most people, across the board, almost everywhere. The way that we guard against that really is just diversification. So we have sites in many different utilities. We have six facilities right now and building two more, and they all have a totally different energy procurement situation. They're all in different utility jurisdictions. That helps us with mitigating outages, but it also gives us insulation to the energy markets themselves. So those would be the key risks that I would highlight, and the ways that we uniquely tackle them. /episode/index/show/commercialrealestatepronetwork/id/40639695

Commercial Real Estate Law with Andy Mathews - CRE PN #547 04/09/2026

BIGGEST RISK with Andy Mathews 04/07/2026

AI Adoption and Implementation with Michelle Hamilton - CRE PN #546 04/02/2026

BIGGEST RISK with Michelle Hamilton 03/31/2026

Real Estate Investing Mindset for Success with Jens Nielsen - CRE PN #545 03/26/2026

BIGGEST RISK with Jens Nielsen 2026 03/24/2026

Real Estate Investment Equity Building and Cash Flow with Gino Barbaro - CRE PN #544 03/19/2026

BIGGEST RISK with Gino Barbaro 03/17/2026

BIGGEST RISK with Gino Barbaro J Darrin Gross I'd like to ask you, Gino Barbaro, what is the BIGGEST RISK? Gino Barbaro That is an excellent question. I can look at risk from my own perspective in my life as when I look at risk, what is the risk of not doing something? If I had been at the restaurant back in 2008 and I would have said, You know what? It's too risky. I've got a nice little small business. I'm hanging out. I'm doing okay, and that's what a lot of people out in society right now. They have a comfortable job. They're not looking around. They think that there's no risk involved in that. Whatever you do in this world, whether you're working for yourself or you're working for an employer, there is always risk involved. Choose risk accordingly. I had that picture in my mind of, you know, becoming getting into my 60s and being stuck in a kitchen doing something that I hated. What's more riskier than that? I mean, I don't care how much money I lose and doing whatever, but to me, that picture was scary as hell. There was a lot of risk involved in that, and I didn't want to live my life that way. Now, how do you mitigate the risk? I remember being in the laundry room with my wife. It was around 2012 and I looked at her, I smelled like garlic. I just come home from the restaurant, and I said, Julia, I can't take this anymore. I need to leave New York, and I need to get out of the restaurant business. And she looked at me, and in about three seconds she said, Okay. I was shocked that she actually said, okay, but I think she looked at the pain on my face. Now, the reason why I'm telling you this story is what I proceeded to do after was to try to minimize the risk. At that point, I was all in with real estate. I said to myself, If my wife is give me the grace, and is giving me the permission to get into this venture full time. I need to give it my all. I need to learn, and I need to dedicate time and become an expert in the craft of real estate. Forget about single family homes, forget about self storage, forget about Bitcoin. Focus on multifamily, and I proceeded over the next three to four years to really become an expert in investing in real estate, that's probably the best tip that I can give you on minimizing risk, is to become an expert in whatever you're getting yourself into before you put that first dollar into an investment exhaustive join mentorships groups, go out there and learn how to become an. Investor, read tons of books, see what other people have done as far as becoming experts in that specific area. To me, that was the best thing. When she said, Yes, I couldn't let her down. And I knew that, and it's funny, because she had confidence in me. She knew that I was going to work hard. So for me to know that I'm like, I can't let her down. I can't let my family down, so that's why I plowed in. I even ended up opening up the Jake and Gino community because I knew that was a way for me to start learning. I started a podcast because Darrin gross told me would be a great idea. I wrote a book. All of a sudden, I'm learning all of these things about real estate. That's probably one of the better ways to actually start mitigating the risks is by becoming an expert in what you're doing, ultimately, you're trying to avoid the downside risk. And then for us in the real estate space, we created that framework. And I work with frameworks, whether it's buy, right, manage, right, finance, right, whether it's the three pillars of real estate, whether it's a negotiation framework that we use, you have to really understand to limit that downside risk you're looking at it, and for us to limit the risk is to have more of a long term approach. If you're trying to do something with a short window and less time, there's more risk involved in something like that. But we know if we buy an asset, we buy it with good fundamentals, we buy it in a good market that's growing, if we are able to be able to cash flow, put good debt on that. That's going to limit my downside risk going forward. Now. /episode/index/show/commercialrealestatepronetwork/id/40393430

Portugal Short Term Rentals Investment Strategy with Daniel Daly - CRE PN #543 03/12/2026

BIGGEST RISK with Daniel Daly 03/10/2026

Multifamily Value Add Investing Market Reset with Mark Shuler - CRE PN #542 03/05/2026

BIGGEST RISK with Mark Shuler 03/03/2026

BIGGEST RISK with Mark Shuler J Darrin Gross So if you're willing, I'd like to ask you. Mark Shuler, what is the BIGGEST RISK? Mark Shuler I have a pat answer for that. The biggest risk to real estate is government. That's what I was alluding to. And beginning of this conversation, the West Coast Seattle is as Uber blue as it gets. You have a lot of well meaning city councils and county councils trying to address significant housing crisis that exists throughout the entire country right now. And they, rather than letting the markets Mark operate efficiently. They get in there and they they throw roadblocks in it, and we can't produce enough housing as a consequence, then we have a supply problem, and they enact rent control and other pieces of legislation that make the operation of real estate even more difficult. I That's why I left Seattle. I can't do it here anymore, specifically because of that. So that's one thing you know. You've got to look at the the risk posed by your local government, and see if that you know, if you can develop hedges against that risk. I when I first got into the business, I could do that in western Washington, but they it just became apparent after a while, there was so much legislation being layered on that the hedges were disappearing left and right, and so I made the choice that I couldn't do it here anymore. I had to find marketplaces that were more fair. And also, I will say this is a political side. I mean most politicians, politicize housing as if it's a fight between corporate interests and you know, you know tenants who don't have any control over their lives. You know, that's the nature of renting. Most operators I know are very hard working people and are doing the best they can in a pretty oppressive regulatory environment. There's no cabal of operators out there colluding and setting rents. And Berkeley just learned a big ass lesson about this where they. They tried to sue. Who was it? You know, that online platform, real page, claiming that real page was setting rent prices in the marketplace, and they were like taking them down real page. Those are, those are some tough guys, and they did not back down from a fight. Sued the shit out of Berkeley. Berkeley tucked tail and back down because they knew they were going to lose and lose big. So this issue is very emotional. It gets very politicized. It plays well on an election cycle, and so I just get tired of it. I just want to do my job. I really want to do my job and not have this white noise distraction that I have to deal with. But unfortunately, that's what that's the biggest risk I see in real estate right now. Then you you layer on top of that, this the politics in general, what I what really concerns me. Now, in addition to that, the other big risk is, this is just our political environment. It's so but, you know, bifurcated, and it's so politicized and the conversations are so extreme, there's no more middle ground, and there are only two or three things that control our entire economy, oil and bonds. And you know, if it seems like every time Trump opens his mouth about tariffs, the bond market Spike 25 basis points, I was in the middle of a refi three weeks ago, and he, he kind of went on his tariff tantrum again, cost me $250,000 that's, that's the impact bond rates have on, you know, the cost of doing business. I was in the middle of refi. I had to do nothing but suck it up and, you know, sign that loan in one day, I lost $250,000 on a refund. So government is a, you know, housing is one of the most nuanced and market driven things I can think of. It responds to supply and demand. The players are in it, who are in it, who are really good their market, they're they're watching this all the time. And contrary to popular belief, the margins in real estate are thin. They're not that great. So if the market swings wildly like that, how do you how do you do business? You can't make you can't plan for 612, 18 months down the road, which is that's the long, the length of time we think about. We're thinking in terms of multiple years cycles. And when you have this volatility in marketplace, how do you make business plans? That is in large part why we have such a housing crisis in this country that and the cost of labor, the cost of materials, has spiked dramatically. It's just more expensive to put up housing. But then you layer on all this government nonsense, this is really hard to build housing, and that's and as a consequence, supply, demand being what it is, price of housing goes up, rents go up. I don't know a developer out there that would not love to build affordable housing, but they can't afford to do so. That's my soapbox. /episode/index/show/commercialrealestatepronetwork/id/40266940

Creative Finance Investment Strategies with Caleb Christopher - Cre PN #541 02/26/2026

BIGGEST RISK with Caleb Christopher 02/24/2026

Investing Money Mindset with George Thomas - CRE PN #540 02/19/2026

BIGGEST RISK with George Thomas 02/19/2026

BIGGEST RISK with George Thomas J Darrin Gross If you're willing, I'd like to ask you, George Thomas, What is the BIGGEST RISK? George Thomas By far, the best the biggest risk, is not investing. You know, to darrin's point about, can you avoid it? You could try to avoid it. You can put it into the savings account, and you could, you know, avoid the market because you're worried about what could happen with your money. You could, but you run the risk of having to work tirelessly and getting nowhere the rest of your life. So that that so that moves that, that moves that away. The second piece is, is, can you? Can you mitigate it in some regards? So you, you can do things to help you mitigate some by understanding what the strategies are when it comes to investing, right? Does carry risk? Yes, you could be in the wrong investment, and it could turn into a true disaster. So what you do there to mitigate is to get the education you need to be able to use what you know is necessary for you to get to your end destination, which is financial freedom. And then you talked about transferring risk. Transferring risk is, is you can transfer risk through investing. If you enter strong, long standing companies at discounted prices. If you can do that, all strong companies eventually, although they go on sale, they do rebound and then continue upward, because they are true companies that are profitable revenue generating with significant shareholder interest. So if you can get strong blue chip companies at a discount and then enter your investing, you're transferring the risk back to the company to help to for them to continue to perform and be those companies. So if you're into Microsoft, your videos and all these other ones, again, this is just examples, not financial advice, but if you can find these companies at a discount that can help you transfer some of the risk and concerns you may have about investing, transfer it back to the company that you're investing into for them to continue to perform. So the greatest risk is not investing, because if you don't invest, how exactly are you planning to get to your end destination with your financial goals for you and your family and most people that don't invest end up working tirelessly and long and missing out on important things that were important in their life, and if they would have just had just a little more of their most valuable asset time, they would have been able to do and enjoy life the way that they ultimately would have. So that, to me, is a great risk and not one I'm worth taking. So we got into investing. /episode/index/show/commercialrealestatepronetwork/id/40160705

Real Estate Investor Fixed Income Investment Strategy with Nic Deangelo - CRE PN #539 01/22/2026

BIGGEST RISK with Nic Deangelo 01/20/2026

BIGGEST RISK with Nic Deangelo J Darrin Gross I'd like to ask you, Nick Deangelo, what is the BIGGEST RISK? Nic Deangelo The biggest risk, I'll give you the biggest front side and the biggest backside. Biggest front side is always going to be due diligence on our side, we have beaten that to death. We have overlaid many economic factors. Our due diligence confidence is at an all time high. But what I see in the marketplace is many people not doing the due diligence to a real, true conservative estimate of outcomes that is the biggest risk. And we saw that the last few years. And we see the back end of what that looks like, the optimistic, the rosy projections, things like that, and that's consistently what we see. And then on the back end, let's talk portfolio strategy. We have over 600 mortgages. We got, you know what, 19 syndications that we've done, the number one risk that I've seen on that side is not thinking long term. I know I beat that to death, but in the same vein of the underwriting and being over rosy with your projections and not really looking at the real numbers and the real economic data on the back end of a portfolio, if you're not thinking long term, and you're not thinking. How these pieces come together, and you're not thinking about how the management performs consistently over a long period of time, then you see shortcuts evolve. You see bad systems evolve. You see all kinds of shorter term thinking that lead to much bigger, snowballed problems later on. So if people are heavy on their due diligence on the front end and know exactly what they're trying to target and whether or not something is specifically in their Buy Box or not, and how to get that information effectively. That's one piece. And then on the back end, it's building everything for stress testing over a long period of time, thinking about a portfolio in that same vein. So if you're doing those two things, I think you're going to be very, very, very well hedged against stress and risk in the future. /episode/index/show/commercialrealestatepronetwork/id/39711635

Financial Statements and Strategic Planning with Cary Prejean - CRE PN #538 01/15/2026

BIGGEST RISK with Cary Prejean 01/13/2026

BIGGEST RISK with Charles Gaudet 01/10/2026

BIGGEST RISK with Charles Gaudet J Darrin Gross I'd like to ask you, Charles Gaudet, what is the BIGGEST RISK? Charles Gaudet Well, we mentioned risks earlier, of you know, between the marketing risks and the operational sales risk and all that other stuff. But right now, there's the risk of the unknown. And when I say that every single business is being disrupted by AI already, as it sits right now. The thing is, is, if you look back at 2025, and you ask most people, have you been disrupted by AI? Most people will say, No. You'll ask them, okay, what have you found about your business? And they might say, well, leads have been harder. Sales have been harder. Business just feels harder. And when you ask them why, they'll say things like, make a political maybe it's Trump, maybe it's the economy, maybe it's this, maybe it's that, but it's this. Is the thing that they don't realize. They actually have been disrupted by AI. You see, 60% of all their organic traffic has disappeared between January of 2025, and December of 2025 that traffic disappeared because of AI. If you go to Google and you type in any of the buying search terms, you'll notice AI overviews start to get respond with different answers and so forth, and they're not just giving the website. If you go to perplexity and you type in a perplexity, they give you answers. They don't just give you the website. If you go to Atlas, for those who are using it, or chat GBT, you know, they'll give you answers, they don't give you the website. And so the result of that is we are being disrupted by AI as it stands right now. Do we think that trend is going to continue? Well, yes, it's going to continue. And there's disrupting technologies that unlike the web, when the internet came around and it was like, if you're not on the internet, then you don't exist, that took years before it got to that conclusion where, if you weren't on the internet, that didn't exist. But now what's happening is Google didn't ask your permission to change their algorithm. They just did it, and that started to reduce the search. There's a new browser that's coming out that Google will be launching any minute now that it's already on beta, called disco. Nobody really knows what's the impact that disco is going to have on organic search behavior. I have a client, eight figure client, and I was able to take him into the future and show him some of the future browsing activities that are going on. And you know, when this goes live, the impact. And so we typed in a buying keyword, and what ended up happening to him is AI literally said, here's the reviews of everything that's going on. The thing is, is you can also do it yourself. Would you like me to create a system and a and the emails and this and that, to do it yourself? And he was like, wait a minute, what's happening right now? And I'm like, This is why I'm showing you this, because we can prepare if we know in advance another situation. Somebody turned around, he has a product, and they go, let me take you in the future. Let's take a look what's going to happen. He put it into the into the product, and it said, here's the reviews and here's my concerns. Would you like me to show three other products based on everything that I know about you that might be better suited. And he goes, what is happening right now? I didn't think my competition would be AI. I thought it was going to be the other products in the category. And this is why we're taking you into the future, so we don't know how the extent of the disruption that we're going to be faced with, but we do know we're already being disrupted, and we will continue to be disrupted, so there are still some core fundamental things that people can put into place and into action to minimize that disruption. Have a strong unique advantage, continue to put out great, high value content that people will consume. To build that loyal fan base, build your following, build your community, build that brand awareness, and that will help to to mitigate build partnerships. Partnerships are wonderful way that helps to mitigate the. Impact of AI, but everybody's going to be everybody's going to be disrupted. The beautiful thing is that what you will see by the end of this year, the people who are the most strategic are going to have an outsized advantage over everybody else, and you will begin to see a case shaped bit of the economy. The most strategic people are going to go ahead, and they're going to get a massive advantage, and those less strategic are going to fall by the wayside, because AI is going to they're fighting for survival. AI is going to continue to guide you towards the best competitor, the best company, the best service, the best product, and it's going to continue to align itself with the best so you can't afford to be mediocre anymore. You have to be strategic. /episode/index/show/commercialrealestatepronetwork/id/39681360

Founders Trap Business Growth Marketing Systems with Charles Gaudet - CRE PN #537 01/08/2026

Automated Parking Systems with Chris Tiessen - CRE PN #536 01/01/2026

Commercial Real Estate Pro Network

TOPICS